1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method for rapid robotic pick up and delivery of articles. The subject of this patent application is a system designed to allow robots the capability of pick up and delivery with a minimum of moving parts
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
The transportation of articles within a structure, or between multiple structures has posed, to some degree, a problem since the industrial revolution. Many transportation options exist today as commercially available products, for example, conveyer belts, pneumatic tubes, gimbled carts, and mobile robots. Mobile robots, or Autonomous Guided Vehicles, are vehicles that have been equipped with a drive system under computer control which allows autonomous guidance between two locations.
The recent availability of sophisticated computing capabilities accessible at the size of a computer chip, has created a revival of the mobile robot field after its introduction in the 1960s, followed by a languishing market in the late 1980s. Initially, robots were used in industrial plants where they became an obvious choice for moving material over greater distances than conveyer belts could reasonably perform. Although, there is significant economic incentive to introduce mobile robots into hospitals and laboratories, relatively little progress has been made towards using mobile robots to deliver hospital supplies or even participate in the process of laboratory analysis. For example, the physical movement of medical specimens, pharmaceuticals, blood products, patient charts, x-rays, and meals cost over 1 million dollars annually for hospitals with over 500 beds. In buildings where laboratories are spread out over a large geographic area, specimen delivery can account for a large percentage of technologist time. Pharmaceutical laboratories process large numbers of samples and transportation of these samples can readily be standardized to be compatible with mobile robots.
Many laboratories are not yet organized in a streamlined fashion because technologists must react to the changing numbers of laboratory requests, additional processing steps, and problem specimens. Providing conveyance to and from laboratories requires flexibility in order to accommodate the changing analytical requests.
Other industries can benefit from mobile robot technology equipped with automatic pick up and delivery. Currently large corporations employ one or more people to pick up and deliver inter and intraoffice mail or deliver supplies. It is recognized that office automation is a more economical approach and the office automation market is predicted to be a multibillion-dollar industry in the next century. Automatic office delivery will improve the efficiency of today""s workforce by providing low cost, predictable and error free delivery of office mail and supplies.
The problem, to date, has not been moving the material, but rather the economic pick up and delivery without human intervention. Although having mobile robots move material from one place to another saves substantial manpower, it is often counteracted by the need of personnel to be present to load and unload the robot. By providing a pick up and delivery system that requires no human participation, the system becomes highly economical and convenient for all employees.
A pick up and delivery system for use with mobile robots which have a body with a horizontal upper surface and at least one vertical side. The robot has at least one shelf, each of which contains a stop bar containing a retaining device. The shelf can be spaced from, and parallel to, an upper surface of the mobile robot. Alternatively, the shelves can be parallel to the body of the robot. The robot contains sensors to indicate the position of the robot relative to the station. The system further uses multiple stations, each of which contain at least one pallet-retaining surface to contain at least two pallets. The pallet retaining surfaces are provided with a holding device at the pick up area and a holding device at the delivery area. Pallets are used to retain the items being transferred with each of the pallets having a securing device that interacts with the holding device and retaining device. The strength of the holding device at the pick up area is less than the holding device at the delivery area, with the robot""s retaining device having a strength between the strength of the holding devices. The mobile robot picks up a pallet from a first station, with the strength of the retaining device being greater than the pick up holding device, thereby transferring the pallet to the robot. At delivery, the delivery holding device is greater than the retaining device, thereby delivering the pallet to the second station.
In one embodiment, the shelf and pallet retaining surfaces are parallel to a base surface. The robot shelf has a height from the base surface slightly greater than the height of the pallet-retaining surface to allow the shelf to overlap the retaining surface. The shelf overlaps the pallet-retaining surface a distance sufficient to allow the retaining device to come in contact with the pallet-securing device. The retaining devices can be magnetic, electromagnetic, or mechanical, such as hook and loop material. The retaining devices can comprise a spring device to allow for horizontal movement of the retaining device. The shelves can further comprise guides to prevent horizontal movement of the pallets during pick up and delivery. Multiple sensors can also be provided on the shelves to register the presence of a pallet. The sensors can be provided at the station and on the robot to transmit the presence of the pallet to a processing unit, in order for the processing unit to track the location of each pallet.
The stations can, in one embodiment be provided with receiving notches positioned at various distances from the base surface. The pallet retaining surfaces are provided with flanges to interact with the receiving notches to affix the pallet receiving surface to the station at various heights.